It has often been discussed what the impact of political parties are on the economy, with both parties claiming to have the upper hand. Some reference their policies, others note outcomes, and others still push from unproven theories to try something new.
In the end, only the outcomes can be objectively measured. But even with that, interpretation plays a role. In this series of debate club posts, I want to post some outcomes and then discuss the interpretation of them. We started with the State federal dependencies and economic production, which showed a clear trend favoring Democratic control of states for less economic dependency and more economic value creation, and greater economic dependency and less value creation for states under Republican control. Discussion points included granularity (investigating the specific levels for the trends), causality (what causes economic outcomes), definition of terms (what does it mean to be in control of a state), geographical advantages, industry dynamics and outliers. In general, the only conclusion that can be made from this level is regarding claims of which party control is better for the state (Democrats have non-conclusive support for their claim, Republicans have proof against their claim and/or no support at all).
In this part, we will look at other state economic factors that are not related to federal government dependency.
The facts will be presented below, and my analysis will be available in the comments, to avoid bias.
SECTION TWO: STATE ECONOMIC INDICATORS
In this section we will look at a few economic indicators of wellbeing, including poverty rate, GDP per capita, cost of living, unemployment rate, state tax rate, and rate of economic crimes. As a refinement on the previous section, we will be adding some nuance to political indicators, showing more than just Democratic or Republican, and adding Strong History, Leaning, and Neutral classifications. This will help to see if there are even more impacts based on how long and how strong party control is.
The statistics are as follows. I will do a quick summary of averages at the bottom, and then discussion in the comments.
R&I-Rawr